U’thyr snorted in bemusement. To think his mother and Merlin wanted him tied to some wench and acting just like those besotted fools! He’d trust no woman. A man’s trust should lie only in his dagger and axe.
His attention was drawn from the fighting youths by the sound of a horn, blown repeatedly, that cut through the dwindling twilight. Peering through the smoke toward the Khu-stone, he spotted a party of newcomers, a good sized troupe with many sheep and cattle, fronted by warriors in stout leather jerkins and red woollen cloaks, one of whom was blowing on a huge ox-horn bound with copper. “All hail to Gorlas of Belerion!” the warrior shouted between discordant blasts of the horn. “Lord of the farthest West, master of tin, tamer of bronze, trader of axes…”
"King of braggarts, by the sound of it,” murmured U’thyr, who had arrived at Deroweth with little ceremony. Still, his interest was piqued, for he had never met this Western chief, and he leaned forward straining his eyes into the growing gloom.
The red-caped warriors marched past, followed by Gorlas’s shepherds with their flocks for trade and slaughter. Pushed by two youths, an enormous wooden keg trundled by, sloshing some kind of alcoholic drink, followed by a gaggle of sweaty, red-faced women rolling a gigantic Moon-like disc of cheese—both obviously gifts to the Temple to declare Chief Gorlas’s wealth and power.
A whip cracked sharply, the horn blasted with even more furious intensity, and two chunky carts rolled into view, shuddering and juddering across the uneven ground. On the first lay a man, big as a bear, reclining on a bed of rich furs. His hair was blue-black, similar to that of a Sea-Pirate, falling in coils almost to his waist. A golden Moon-collar circled his throat, and his bare chest was tattooed with fantastical animals. His beard was cut short but it was thick and bushy covering much of his broad, thick-jawed face. Rings and ornaments jangled in his tresses, proclaiming his extreme wealth and rank.
“So that’s the man who thinks so highly of himself!” laughed U’thyr, not very impressed. The man was so fat, he looked as though the only way he could kill an enemy would be to crush him with his bulk!
U’thyr let his gaze wander from the corpulent tin-lord to the cart behind. Sitting on a pile of soft sheepskins was a woman clad in expensive blue-dyed linen. She was young and very small, almost child-like in appearance, but there was toughness in the set of her shoulders and the arrogant tilt of her jaw. She had long, loose, wavy dark hair that held a hint of copper fire, and her brow was bound by a diadem of a pale, Moon-coloured metal that U’thyr had never seen before.
“She is a comely woman, is she not?” U’thyr glanced over to see Merlin walking toward him, dressed in his robes of priesthood, a long tunic of tanned hide fringed with the claws and teeth of foxes, badgers, boars, dogs and even the canine of a great wolf that the local villagers had brought down one Winter. A staff topped by a human jawbone was in his right hand, for when he wished to speak to the Dead. Around his neck hung the skull of his long-dead totem-hawk, bound in bronze, with chips of faience for eyes. “But do not stare too much…I’ve heard Gorlas protects her as a bear protects its young! And can you blame him?”
U’thyr looked over in surprise at his friend, his mentor. He usually thought of Merlin, with his grey-flecked hair and craggy visage, as an old man, unlikely to talk of the charms of women, but he remembered that in truth that the priest was only a handful of years older than U’thyr himself. “Is she his daughter?”
“No, his wife! Gorlas is lord of a tin mine in Belerion and very rich; in fact, he sometimes trades with our enemies to swell his riches, which is why you have not seen him here before; he is not popular amongst the other chiefs. And the girl... the girl is daughter of an ancient family of Belerion; they say her Ancestors’ Ancestors came from the Drowned Lands where the Little Sea now flows. He saw her dancing within their holy Circle on Bhel’s Eve, and was so overcome by lust that he ran into the stones and snatched her away, kicking and screaming, right in front of the shaman. Her father was so vexed he came here to Khor Ghor to ask the priests to intervene. We decided to let Gorlas keep the girl if he would wed her honourably and pay reparations in gold and cattle to her sire and to the dishonoured temple. He did as asked and within nine Moons the girl bore him a daughter. This secured her position with him, for all his other three wives proved barren—a sure sign the spirits were angry.”
“Why has Gorlas come here now, when he is unpopular through his dealing with the sea-folk?”
The corner of Merlin’s mouth quirked upwards. “Can you not guess? He has a daughter but that is not enough. Now that the spirits smile on him, he has come to ask them for a son.”
U’thyr nodded toward Gorlas’s wife, who had climbed down from the cart and gone to the fat man, stretching a hand to help him ponderously descend from his fur bed. “And what is the name of this Western woman, with her silver brow and fierce eyes?”
“Y’gerna,” said Merlin. "That is her name. The Queen.”
Gorlas and Y’gerna began walking slowly toward the great portal pillars of Woodenheart, surrounded by their followers and the curious crowds of Deroweth. U’thyr was possessed by a sudden desire to see more, and scrambled to his feet, almost tumbling down the bank in his haste.
Merlin frowned at him. “Where are you going, U’thyr? We have only just met and off you run like a deer in the wood! I need to know of your doings in the land of the Dwr, of the raiders and the outcome of your battles.”
“Merlin, forgive me!” U’thyr bowled humbly, hoping he appeared suitably apologetic. “But I…I must also ask a favour of the spirits in Woodenheart. Very urgent. I mustn’t delay. I will be back as soon as I may.”
“A favour, eh?” Merlin tapped the jawbone on his staff with a fingernail, making an annoyed click-click-click. “Just make sure this ‘favour’ is asked of the gods…and not that girl! Or about that girl!”
“Girl!” U’thyr felt colour flood his face. “I am not…I swear it…”
Merlin waved his hand dismissively. “Go, U’thyr. But be careful. I need your arm against our foes; I don’t want it hacked off by bull-headed Gorlas of Belerion!”
U’thyr slid down the bank and pushed his way through the milling crowds. He could feel a tension rising in the tribesfolk, charging the air like lightning. They were almost hysterical with mingled joy and fear: knowing that if the gods so willed the warmer days would soon return, yet terrified that their prayers and sacrifices would not suffice, and Bhel would die upon the Altar at Khor Ghor and never rise again.
Thrusting the wild-eyed revellers, the endless yapping dogs, the trundling sheep, he stepped over the threshold of Woodenheart. Its posts soared around him, as imposing as living trees and red from the heat of the great hearth at its centre, where the little child's grave-cairn lay crossing the Midsummer alignment.
A priest and priestess stood on either side of the cairn, listening to the supplications of a line of men and women. Unlike Khor Ghor, which was the gathering place of spirits on their way to eternity, this temple was a place of life as well as death, its pillars like fossilised trees, permanent and undecayed. People came to Woodenheart to pray for the easy passing of dying elders and sickly babes, and for the birth of strong infants and the continued fecundity of both the womb and the field.
Ahead, half-shrouded in the smoke that billowed from the hearth, U’thyr spotted Y’gerna’s arrow-straight back, draped in her long dark hair. Gorlas was clutching her arm as if he feared she would run away, but U’thyr scarcely noticed him. Just a fat old man, puffed up with pride, not worth noticing.
The tiny woman approached the priest and priestess. They turned her around three times, chanting, before leading her deeper into the temple, to the three-sided cove of standing stones that were both tomb and womb. She knelt on the floor, hair spilling like midnight water around her. “Grant me a son, O ancient ones, spirits of earth, spirits of grave!” she cried. “My lord desires a son to rule after him, strong and healthy.”
The temple priestess
, whitened by chalk from head to toe, stepped forward carrying a set of old, bleached antlers, symbol of the feminine. The priest, painted such a shade of dark blue he looked almost black, moved alongside her, bearing a huge stone phallus decorated with mistletoe. The priestess laid the antlers before Y’gerna and began to chant, holding up her bone-white arms to the sky. The priest’s deep voice sang out in answering incantation, and he began to whirl and dance around Y’gerna, waving the phallic sceptre and thrusting it at the heavens and at the supplicant and her husband, who stood staring at the spectacle, his face red and sweating like a piece of cooking meat.
When the priest was done, the priestess took Y’gerna’s hand and raised her to her feet. Her eyes rolled and she leaned on the girl’s shoulder. A tendril of drool trickled from the corner of her lips. “Yes…yes…” she croaked in a voice coarsened by the smoke of the pyre. “A child shall come to you…. A male child…a special child…” Her fingers caught in Y’gerna’s blue robes, clutching at the girl’s stomach. “Within the month he will be conceived; he will be a great hero beyond compare. His name will be sung for eternity!”
The priestess stumbled away, shaking, worn out by her prophecy. She dropped, panting, to all fours beside the fire. The priest lay down the sacred phallus. “It will be so,” he said. “The spirits have spoken. Go now!”
Y’gerna turned on her heel, her long locks swinging. Gorlas followed her like an eager dog, his podgy face florid and smug. “Well, that is good news. Come, wife, let us go to our tent and make sure the prophecy comes true!”
Y’gerna scowled and lashed out at him with a small, clenched fist. “Don’t bother me, you uncouth oaf! I am tired; we have been travelling for days. Let me have at least one night in peace where I may forget my ‘duties!’”
Gorlas sprang away from her as though he’d been burnt. His face so suffused by blood it looked as though his bloated cheeks might burst. Y’gerna seemed not to care that he was angry. Without a single glance at her furious, shamed husband, she swept from Woodenheart and out into the frosty winter night.
Intrigued, U’thyr followed, skulking in the distance among the festive solstice crowds. He did not want Gorlas to spot him. Or Y’gerna, for that matter. He just wanted to watch her, light and lithe as a river spirit, brave and fierce as a she-bear. And so pleasing to look upon, with her narrow waist and arrogant but lovely face….
Stop it, he chided himself, feeling foolish. He was near as bad as the two lads fighting over the yellow-headed trull…There were plenty of good women available who were not bound to other men.
He paused, hiding behind a greybeard who was dragging a stubborn goat along and cursing as the animal butted him with stubby horns. Over the man’s bony shoulder, he could see Y’gerna walking down the wide path that led to the banks of Abona—the Path of the Sun, which would light up on the morn of the shortest day. But it wasn’t the Sun she went to greet, hours away in His bed in Darkness, but Mother Moon, sailing across the distant tree tops. She raised her arms and began to dance, tossing back her hair, moving her slim hips. She sang in a low voice, in a language U’thyr did not know but recognised; the tongue of the Firstborn, who came to Prydn after the Great Ice melted from the land, and hunted great elk and wolves and bear in forests that had now vanished. Later, others speaking new tongues came to Albu, bringing a settled way of living that supplanted the old hunting life. With the end of the hunter, the old language died too, and languages of trade became paramount. Still, a few words of the First Tongue were heard occasionally on the lips of certain sturdy, dark men who still lived a semi-nomadic existence, and some rivers and hills bore names that had no meaning in the common Western tongue.
He paused, watching, and felt a fire burn in his loins unlike any such longing he had ever experienced before. The other women he had lain with seemed dull and trivial, creatures of lowly clay. Y’gerna was a being of the Moon and the night, flitting to and fro like the fireflies that buzzed over the walls of Deroweth.
Like a man possessed, he stumbled forward onto the metalled Path of the Sun.
Y’gerna must have sensed his presence; she ceased her frenzied Moon-dance and turned. Her eyes were midnight hollows; the shadowy webs of her lashes dark on her cheeks. “Why do you stare, stranger? Do you always go about gawking at women you do not know?”
He suppressed a grin. “Not always. Never in fact, before this night.”
“It is not seemly.”
“Then you should find a place to dance alone, lady. Only a man made of stone would not be entranced by your grace and beauty.”
She laughed sharply, and then snorted, “You have a honeyed tongue! What are you…a singer of songs?”
He approached her, shaking his head. He could see stars reflected in the dark pools of her eyes and caught in her damp-frizzed hair. His heart thumped madly. “No, lady. I am head chief of the mighty Dwr. My lands stretch from the sea to the Great Fort of the Plain, Mai Dhun, to the spirit-path that is known as the Dragon’s Back.”
“You are young to hold such a vast realm.” She looked impressed; he could feel her sharp gaze scanning his features, running approvingly over his torso and down his slim, leather-clad legs. He flushed furiously; he was used to appraising women, not the reverse.
“My father recently passed to Otherness,” he said, attempting to hide his embarrassment in words. “He fell to the arrow of a Sea-Pirate. And so his lands are now mine to rule.”
Y’gerna chewed her lips. “I am sorry for your loss. I do not like the Sea-people. My husband curries their favour, but I can read deceit and hatred in their eyes.”
U’thyr stepped up to her, touching her blue-clad arm. “Why are you with that treacherous fool? He is old and foul, with one foot in the barrow! He does not deserve you.”
Her lips pursed, a small hard bud. “He is wealthy and he is powerful, lord of tin and master of many cattle. He is the father of my daughter, Morigau. He claimed me by conqueror’s rights and gave my family much-needed wealth. Is that not enough for any woman? Or can you offer me more?”
She tossed back her hair and stared intently into his eyes, her stance fierce, with her legs braced apart and her arms folded. He was all too aware of the Moonlight shining through the fabric of her gown, and the beckoning play of shadows between her breasts.
“If you leave him,” U’thyr said gruffly, “I will make sure you and yours will never go short. I will bring you gold from Ibherna, amber and jet from the North and blue star-beads from the South. You will want for nothing, nor will your kin, and you shall not have to endure the lusts of an old, fat, failing man.”
She leaned toward him, her hair brushing his cheek, her breath a whisper against his ear. “You will have to kill him, you know.”
A fierce, hard look came into U’thyr’s gaze. “If I must.” He reached for her, breath heavy, wanting in that instant nothing more than to pull her down into the grass, Gorlas and Merlin be damned
She danced away from him, light as a linden leaf in the starshine. “You are a bold fellow, aren’t you? I like that. But you need to prove yourself to me by brave deeds, not by brave words. I will leave you now to think on this, U’thyr Pendraec. And on this, lest you forget me when the mead wears off.” She sidled up to him and let her fingertips drift seductively down his skin-clad thigh, and then, laughing, she sprinted off into the crowd of late-night revellers, leaving U’thyr staring helplessly after her.
*****
Merlin found him a short while later, sitting on the bank staring moodily into the night. “Where have you been?” chided the High Priest “You said you were coming back to discuss important matters with me. But no, I find you moping here with a face sour as an unripe apple! What’s wrong, U’thyr? Has the drink curdled in your belly?”
U’thyr leaped up, a sudden spark of green fury in his eyes. Merlin almost stepped back, but did not; he would not show such weakness to his young protégé. “Merlin,” snarled U’thyr, his voice harsh, “I must have her! No other w
ill do!”
“Who? What?” the shaman frowned, and then, as realisation hit him: “By Bhel’s blood, I knew this was going to happen from the moment Gorlas and his party arrived, and you were there with your eyes where they shouldn’t be! This is folly, U’thyr, folly and madness! She is his wife, you fool! We need to be making alliances, not breaking them! Start fighting amongst ourselves, and we are doomed; the Sea-pirates will overwhelm us!”
“I do not care!” U’thyr’s tone was hard, dangerous. “It is as if the gods planned the hour of our meeting, and gave me a quest to take her for my own. If I can steal her from Gorlas, maybe the words the priestess spoke in Woodenheart will be relevant to me, not that slobbering half-man!”
Merlin’s face grew very solemn and still. “Words? What words were spoken? Tell me, boy!”
“The priestess said Y'gerna would bear a son…a child who would grow so great he would be remembered when we are all dust in our barrows!”
Merlin’s eyes grew distant, black; he thumped his staff against the packed chalk. “So…it is her…it must be her. How the Ancestors toy with us! Well, if it must be, then it must be, broken alliances or not. U’thyr Pendraec, I will do what I can to get you this woman. But you must make me a promise….”
“What promise is that?”
“That the firstborn son, this special child, will be given to me at birth, that I might raise him in my own way.”
“Yes, yes, whatever you wish.” U’thyr waved his hand as if swatting at flies. He was not interested in some putative child, god-touched or no, other than the honour it would bring his line. All he wanted right then was to quell the flames of his passion between Y’gerna’s promising thighs, and of that alone could he think.
Stone Lord: The Legend of King Arthur (The Era Of Stonehenge) Page 8
